Irving introduces an Indian doctor - a hand transplant specialist - who seems poised to become a major character. That would have been disturbing, could have been funny, would have been so much more, well, Irving-like than what he sketches.
Maybe if Irving had launched these people on some kind of odd, possibly deviant sexual adventure - such as Doris not wanting to simply visit the hand, but to have it do certain things to her (with Patrick along, as it were, for the ride). But this was a turn I had a hard time going anywhere with. Now, I'm fairly willing to get on a ride and go with it. This is the point where I sort of the left the book behind. Let me be clear: She wants to visit her dead husband's hand, which is now attached to some other guy. She wants to see the hand from time to time. The deal struck is this: Patrick can have Otto's hand, but his wife, Doris, wants visiting rights. As luck would have it, something does happen to poor Otto: Green Bay loses the Super Bowl, and Otto shoots himself. And so a woman in Green Bay has her husband - a man with the somehow unlikely name of Otto - agree that if anything should happen to him, she would have his permission to take his hand and donate it to the needy Patrick. This leaves Patrick flawed in a way that's pretty tough to hide - and presents Irving with ample opportunities to show us just how tough a hide Patrick really has.īecause Patrick is a celebrity (inasmuch as the general public knows who he is), news of the accident makes him even more of one. At one point, a lion grabs his microphone and swallows it down - while Patrick's hand is holding it. Patrick Wallingford, a supremely handsome 24-hour news reporter, is in India, doing a piece about a circus. Where Garp and Widow present an almost endless number of fascinating characters whom we follow through many years and many (mis)adventures, The Fourth Hand limits itself to a small group of people, none of whom is particularly interesting. Conversely, The Fourth Hand belongs on the opposite end of the Irving spectrum. Widow ranks among, I think, Irving's best books, the best of which is The World According To Garp. I was reading his last novel, A Widow For One Year, when I became aware of the new one - and I was loving it. The new John Irving novel, The Fourth Hand, fell neatly into this latter category.
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